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fglrx installer open-source?

01-01-2008, 03:58 PM

Oh, I understand fglrx is proprietary, but can't AMD make the installer open source? I mean, we can already see the installer script source, so why can't they accept patches from outside (with copyright in their favor)?

Comment

As long as use use the buildpkg code you could even remove the graphical installer. In that case only scripts are used. Ubuntu is a bit tricky with the preinstalled restricted modules manager, most easy way would be removing all packages with restricted in the name first.

Now I realise it is not posible to make a part of the installer script open source.
this is just something I wrote in anger for the fact I did not know how to install the fglrx driver in my Linux distro PC.

But still, reducing the number of steps required to install the driver would be very nice.

Comment

Howdy. Sorry for my first post here being a contrary one but what you say above Kano is simply not true. Yes, you can read the source but that does not make it "open source". Whether it is open source depends on the license it is released under. Just because you can read it does not mean that it is unencumbered or that you are allowed to modify it and distribute it. It is entirely possible for ATI to distribute a scripting language based program (Python, Perl, PHP, Bash, whatever) that you have no right to make changes to or distribute to anyone else.

Cheers

Comment

Well it does not mean GPL or so, but a script is usually a text file so you have the "source" of it. In rare cases there exist encrypted scripts but thats not the case with the ati installer, just use --extract dir option. Maybe your definition is a bit too restricted to licences. In the ati installer are serveral binaries with no source like the gui installer or the amdcccle but at least the binary setup tool is not needed at all for --buildpkg, so i could strip down the installer down to 11M and it still installs on 32 bit...